Happy Thanksgiving, quick book notes.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! The late Benazir Bhutto's book about reconciliation is one of the many reasons I am grateful today.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I feel grateful for many gifts in my life.

Most basically, I am grateful for a wonderful family and circle of friends, a sense of wonder and spirit and purpose, meaningful work, a clear mind that allows me to read, think, admit error and learn, a sturdy constitution and good health, and financial sufficiency.

I’m also profoundly grateful for the slivers of experience and memory that I have each day that remind me of what life is about: love, shared connections with other people, working for a larger cause, and trying to make the world better than it is now.

This blog has been a major project for me this year, and I am extremely grateful to all of you who have clicked on, commented, or in some way joined the conversation and community we are creating together.

Your ranks have grown.

The first day I blogged last December, seven people looked at what I had put up and written.

For the past eight weeks, it’s been just about 1,000 people per day.

This is a shared venture of the heart in every way, and I want, on this day of giving thanks, to thank all of you who have joined and contributed to the space.

Have a wonderful day!!

I’ve got a couple of quick book thoughts.

Longtime Washington Wizards’ owner Abe Pollin died earlier this week at age 85.  He is a minor character in When Nothing Else Matters, Michael Leahy’s highly unflattering portrait of Michael Jordan, the man generally considered by many to be the greatest basketball player ever lived.

I recently finished Dart Fellow and Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Dockser Marcus’ Jerusalem 1913, an intriguing look at the waning days of the Ottoman Empire that suggests how the current Arab-Israeli conflict might have turned out differently.

And yesterday I completed the late Benazir Bhutto’s Reconciliation.  Written after her dramatic return to her native Pakistan and right before her assassination two years ago, the book is an effort to bridge the chasm of understanding between the Western and Muslim worlds.  Bhutto takes on the legacy of Western colonialism and the current war in Iraq as well as Muslim extremists.

Fun exchange about virtual Third Places between Ray Oldenburg and Bob Yovovich.

Ray opens the exchange:

Hello Jeff,

Glad you enjoyed the book.  I don’t have much enthusiasm for the so-called “virtual” third places.  The pitch is too psychological or individual-oriented; the “group” doesn’t really do anything, doesn’t build neighborhoods, is not visible to others.  Virtual 3Ps don’t have the mix of personalities, viewpoints, and leanings that real places do.  “Virtual private clubs” would be more accurate. Proponents seem unaware of all that is lost compared to face-to-face interaction.

I’m revisiting some data on laughter which third places generate in great amounts and which, we are told, is good for us.  I rarely chuckle at electronic communication unless a really good joke is forwarded.

Electronic communication spans great distances but what does that do for the neighborhood one lives in?  I concur with Wendell Berry…real community is local, all else is metaphor.  One doesn’t promote a neighborhood very well sitting in a darkened room staring at a computer screen.  Whoever observed that we are no longer neighbors but mere “nigh dwellers” had a point.  Way back in the 1920s Mary Parker Follett saw the folly of “cosmopolitanism” realizing how alike those folks all are.  Real differences between people exist in close physical proximity beyond our privacy fences but we have found need to protect ourselves from them.

By the way, I tried tuning in to a lot of the stuff so easily available while sitting on my ass.  Very boring for the most part.  But I’d never give up my electronic sources.  I have published pieces based on what Google, et. al. provide and could not have done it otherwise.

Bob Answers:

Yes, Ray makes a lot of sense in his comments about the limitations of “Virtual Third Places” (VTPs).

However, I would argue that — despite the limitations of VTPs — they still can play very powerful and valuable roles … and there are lots of examples of how they can actually do some things better than “traditional third places” (TTPs) can do.

I see the relationship between TTPs and VTPs  as similar to the differences between, say, face-to-face communication and written communication.

There is no question that face-to-face can be a very powerful communications tool in ways that written cannot match.

On the other hand, there also are ways in which written communication can be FAR superior to face-to-face.

In the discussions of VTPs, it is important to keep in mind that it is easy to both overstate and understate their effectiveness and usefulness.

And here’s a further complication: It is likely that the virtual / online environment will change our concept of “community” in ways that we are not anticipating.

I came across this type of thing about 20 years ago.  In connection with a book that I was writing, I took at look at forecasts that people – smart people – were making back in the late 1800s about the impact that the telephone would have on businesses and “business communities.”

The forecasts basically fell into one of two categories:
1 – There were those people who were convinced that – because the telephone meant that you did not have to be in close proximity in order to engage in business interactions – the new technology would cause business activity to become much more dispersed and decentralized.
2 – On the other hand, there were those people who were convinced that – because the telephone meant that you now could (from a central office) control business interactions in far-flung locations – the new technology would cause business activity to become much more concentrated and centralized.

What actually happened wasn’t one or the other.  In fact, it wasn’t even a hybrid of the two.

What actually happened was a complicated re-shaping of the business topography of a sort that really had not occurred before. The shapes and nature of “business communities” changed in ways that simply were not anticipated. (For examples of the kind of thing I have in mind, you might want to check out an essay – “New Maps For A New World”  – that I wrote about twenty years ago in connection with that research.)

And, just like the telephone-spurred re-shaping of the business topography, we are in the middle of a Web-spurred re-shaping of our “socio-communal topography.
That’s one of the things that makes all the new social media so exciting.

And, to underscore how fast these changes are taking place, let me point out that NONE of the social media are mentioned – no Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. !!! (much less Twitter, etc.) — in the excellent 2006 paper on “the impact of Internet usage on social connection” that you cited in your initial blog entry.

We need to keep in mind that we are just at the beginning of the discussions of these Web-spurred changes – and I urge you to revisit the work of good old Marshall McLuhan, who has some terrific contributions to make to those discussions.

Including this great McLuhan observation:
“We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”

Let’s keep the conversation going.

– BGY

What do you think?  What are the advantages and tradeoffs of virtual and in-person third places?  Can they work in concert?

 

Rev. Hood brings together people working for peace.

The Rev. Robin Hood looks on as former gang member Derek Brown talks about his efforts to bring peace to the North Lawndale community.

Violence has claimed the lives of far too many young people in Chicago.

Saturday morning, the Rev. Robin Hood of Clergy Committed to Community brought together about two dozen people at Pastor John Drummond’s New Grace Emmanuel Church in the South Chicago neighborhood to figure out how to stop it.

The crowd in the pews were mostly black women, some of whom had children with them, many of whom wore green t-shirts proclaiming their membership in Mothers Opposed to Violence Everywhere, or MOVE.  Four Latino mothers who belong to Mothers for Peace in the Back of the Yards neighborhood sat in a pew in the second row.

The late November morning was sunny and temperate, but the content the speakers discussed was not.

Derek Brown, formerly known as “Shotgun”, spoke after Rev. Hood gave introductory comments.  The formerly high-ranking member of the Vice Lords talked about the work he has done with the youth in his native North Lawndale community to reduce the violence that has been so rampant.

“It’s easy,” said Brown, who has a shaved head, full beard and thickly muscled arms covered with tattoos.  ”Give them something to do and keep them focused.”

One of the somethings Brown has done is get a boxing club started.  This past week he helped organize a talent show that hundreds of kids attended.

Brown explained that funding thus far has come partly through grace and also through he and other young men visiting the businesses in the community.

Lisa Rivera of Mothers for Peace talked about the importance of loving children unconditionally.  Her shoulder length black hair flashing as she spoke, she explained that she has come to realize that judging and condemning her son’s behavior may have pushed him to the street corner, where gang members were waiting for him with open arms.

Rivera, whose 20-year-old son has been incarcerated for two years, visits him every week in prison.  Her group has held meetings with gang members in the community, and the word is spreading.

James Thindwa spoke last.

The Zimbabwean-born former head of Jobs for Justice acknowledged the importance of taking responsibility for children’s actions. But he also talked about the necessity of holding politicians accountable and recognizing the devastating impact job loss has had on black and Latino communities.

“Let’s have both conversations,” Thindwa said, his voice rising as he spoke about Mayor Daley’s 2006 veto of the living wage ordinance that passed the City Council and the $14 billion the United States spends monthly on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many questions remain.

An elder in a black three-piece suit asked Brown how others who have less street credibility than he can intervene with the young people in the community, and did not appear completely satisfied with the answer Brown gave to show no fear.  Several speakers passionately denounced violence in the community while at the same time appearing to condone hitting children as an acceptable form of discipline.  Some of the statistics speakers mentioned were of questionable accuracy.

But a start was made.

On a clean and quiet street in one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by violence, black and brown people came together to talk, to support each other, to forge alliances and to design solutions.

They spoke from their hearts. They listened with respect.  And they gave each other strength to continue the fight.

Ray Oldenburg bemoans the decline of the Great Good Place in American cities

Ray Oldenburg makes a passionate plea for public spaces where people gather. What does this mean in the Internet era?

UPDATE 2: Bob Yovovich responds to Ray Oldenburg’s comments:

Jeff, thanks for your very useful discussion of Third Places … and for bringing Ray Oldenburg directly into the conversation.

Yes, Ray makes a lot of sense in his comments about the limitations of “Virtual Third Places” (VTPs).

However, I would argue that — despite the limitations of VTPs — they still can play very powerful and valuable roles … and there are lots of examples of how they can actually do some things better than “traditional third places” (TTPs) can do.

I see the relationship between TTPs and VTPs  as similar to the differences between, say, face-to-face communication and written communication.

There is no question that face-to-face can be a very powerful communications tool in ways that written cannot match.

On the other hand, there also are ways in which written communication can be FAR superior to face-to-face.

In the discussions of VTPs, it is important to keep in mind that it is easy to both overstate and understate their effectiveness and usefulness.

And here’s a further complication: It is likely that the virtual / online environment will change our concept of “community” in ways that we are not anticipating.

I came across this type of thing about 20 years ago.  In connection with a book that I was writing, I took at look at forecasts that people – smart people – were making back in the late 1800s about the impact that the telephone would have on businesses and “business communities.”

The forecasts basically fell into one of two categories:
1 – There were those people who were convinced that – because the telephone meant that you did not have to be in close proximity in order to engage in business interactions – the new technology would cause business activity to become much more dispersed and decentralized.
2 – On the other hand, there were those people who were convinced that – because the telephone meant that you now could (from a central office) control business interactions in far-flung locations – the new technology would cause business activity to become much more concentrated and centralized.

What actually happened wasn’t one or the other.  In fact, it wasn’t even a hybrid of the two.

What actually happened was a complicated re-shaping of the business topography of a sort that really had not occurred before. The shapes and nature of “business communities” changed in ways that simply were not anticipated. (For examples of the kind of thing I have in mind, you might want to check out an essay – “New Maps For A New World”  – that I wrote about twenty years ago in connection with that research.)

And, just like the telephone-spurred re-shaping of the business topography, we are in the middle of a Web-spurred re-shaping of our “socio-communal topography.
That’s one of the things that makes all the new social media so exciting.

And, to underscore how fast these changes are taking place, let me point out that NONE of the social media are mentioned – no Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. !!! (much less Twitter, etc.) — in the excellent 2006 paper on “the impact of Internet usage on social connection” that you cited in your initial blog entry.

We need to keep in mind that we are just at the beginning of the discussions of these Web-spurred changes – and I urge you to revisit the work of good old Marshall McLuhan, who has some terrific contributions to make to those discussions.

Including this great McLuhan observation:
“We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”

Let’s keep the conversation going.

– BGY

UPDATE: Friend Jim Peters of the Responsible Hospitality Institute connected me to Ray Oldenburg today.

I asked Ray what he thought about virtual, as compared with in-person, third places.

Here is his response:

Hello Jeff,

Glad you enjoyed the book.  I don’t have much enthusiasm for the
so-called “virtual” third places.  The pitch is too psychological or individual-
oriented; the “group” doesn’t really do anything, doesn’t build neighborhoods,
is not visible to others.  Virtual 3Ps don’t have the mix of personalities, viewpoints,
and leanings that real places do.  “Virtual private clubs” would be more accurate.
Proponents seem unaware of all that is lost compared to face-to-face interaction.
I’m revisiting some data on laughter which third places generate in great amounts
and which, we are told, is good for us.  I rarely chuckle at electronic communication
unless a really good joke is forwarded.

Electronic communication spans great distances but what does that do for the
neighborhood one lives in?  I concur with Wendell Berry…real community is local,
all else is metaphor.  One doesn’t promote a neighborhood very well sitting in a
darkened room staring at a computer screen.  Whoever observed that we are
no longer neighbors but mere “nigh dwellers” had a point.  Way back in the 1920s
Mary Parker Follett saw the folly of “cosmopolitanism” realizing how alike those folks
all are.  Real differences between people exist in close physical proximity beyond
our privacy fences but we have found need to protect ourselves from them.

By the way, I tried tuning in to a lot of the stuff so easily available while
sitting on my ass.  Very boring for the most part.  But I’d never give up my
electronic sources.  I have published pieces based on what Google, et. al.
provide and could not have done it otherwise.

Cafes, coffee shops, bars, and beauty parlors share several fundamental similarities.

They are public spaces.  They are where we hang out.  And they help us get through the day.

Author and emeritus sociologist Ray Oldenburg finds, though, that these “third places”-the first two being work and home-are on the decline in urban America, and he’s not pleased about it.

The Great Good Place is his look at these places, their characteristics and meaning, and what can be done to have them re-ascend in importance.

Many thanks to friend and writer Bob Yovovich for pointing me toward this book.

Oldenburg opens the book by talking about the places he has in mind and then takes a global tour of third places, with stops in Viennese coffee houses, Parisian cafes and English pubs being some of his more notable destinations.

While he clearly enjoys the food at these various locations, he is also writing about a quality of interaction, of convivial conversation exchange and of shared pleasure simply in being together.

This type of connection, he argues, was on the downslide in urban American in the late 80s, when the book was first published.  Oldenburg opens and closes the book by examining the reasons behind the fall of the third places-he talks about suburbanization and the emergence of malls as a poor substitute-and ends the book with a passionate and italicized reminder that “It doesn’t have to be like this!”

Fast forward 20 years.

Oldenburg of course was writing before the ascendance of the Internet as a global force for community and connection.

This is dicey territory.

A survey of scholarly research has shown that Internet usage for social connection increases, decreases and does not effect users’ social ties to other people.

I have not yet contacted Oldenburg, but imagine from reading his book and subsequent Project for Public Spaces that he is advocating for more in-person, rather than online, contact.  He writes passionately in his book about American homes becoming the site where one does everything and the diminished public connection that accompanies this development.

Yovovich, on the other hand, is optimistic about the possibility of creating a similar kind of virtual great good place in which people can regularly gather to hang out, share thoughts, see each other and enjoy each other’s company.

What do you think?  Do we have fewer third places?  Is this a bad thing?  Do you connect more often with people in person or online?

The One Minute Manager and Marcus Buckingham tells to go to our strengths.

 

One Minute Manager was one of the two books I read last night.

Dunreith and I hung out for a few hours last night at Border’s in downtown Evanston.

I love it there for many reasons, one of my favorite of which is that I get to wander around and see which books call me.

I’m never quite sure what I’m going to end up sitting down with, although I did know that I wanted to read Pulitzer Prize winner and Dart Fellow Amy Dockser Marcus’ book about 1913 and the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Although I did pull that one down from the shelf and have since taken it out from the library, I did not get to it last night.

Instead, I made my way two business books: The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson and Marcus Buckingham’s Go Put Your Strengths to Work.

I initially got into business books as a way to connect with my brother-in-law Josh; however, I’ve since found that I very much enjoy the genre and often find elements that I can apply to my work and home life.

The One Minute Manager is told as a parable.

The protagonist talks about meeting the one-minute manager, who briskly explains both that he does not like unnecessary repetition and that the author should talk with his employees to find out what type of manager he is.

The protagonist does, learning that the one-minute manager believes in three essential elements: a one-minute goal, one-minute praise, and one-minute reprimand.

The emphasis in each aspect of the approach is that goals should be specific and able to be conveyed in no more than 250 words and 60 seconds.

The praise and reprimands both come within a context of rapid, if not instantaneous feedback, and emphasize letting the feedback settle in for a little while before affirming the person’s value to the organization.

If the method sounds straightforward, well, that is because it is.  Blanchard and Johnson both talk about the goal of management being to have employees who are excited about the work and who themselves go on to extend the method.

Which, unsurprisingly, is what the narrator ends up doing.

Behavior change is also the goal of Buckingham’s book.

I have not read his earlier book about discovering your strengths, and get the sense that this book is a call to apply the strengths identified through reading the previous work.

A former Gallup pollster, Buckingham takes square aim at the ideas-he calls them myths-that we should work to shore up our weaknesses, that our personalities change significantly over the course of our lifetimes, and that being a team player means doing whatever the team needs at all times.

Instead, he advocates identifying, and then figuring out how to spend more time doing, the activities we do well and that give us pleasure.

These are our strengths.

Buckingham’s book includes an online survey through which readers can identify how often they are currently applying their skills in their work. From that assessment, he supplies a six-week program to help raise that percentage.

The book also includes tips on how to talk with peers, friends and eventually managers about how to make these shifts without appearing overly self-promotional or unwilling to do necessary hard work.

Buckingham unfolds his method through talking about Heidi, a woman working for a hotel chain who has, over the course of eight years, lost her zest for her work.  By tracking the amount of time she does activities that either energize or drain her, she is able to start to increase the former and decrease the latter.

Buckingham states clearly that, while we may dream of a job in which we telecommute, hit the beach and make millions, few, if any, such jobs actually exist.

In a similarly unsurprising ending to the book, Heidi gets her work groove back through participating in the six-week program.

The book has some parts that don’t make much sense.

Buckingham cites Dennis Rodman, whose rebounding and defensive prowess were all out of proportion to the rest of his skills, as evidence of how one can parlay playing to one’s strengths.  Yet no serious fan of basketball would consider Rodman an all-time great at the level of Larry Bird, Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan, all of whom continued to refine and improve their games throughout their careers.

His statement that parents who do not harm their children have very little influence on them is also highly likely to raise eyebrows.

That said, both The One-Minute Manager and Buckingham’s book are worth picking up for a quick read. Accessibly written, both offer useful tips for one’s personal and professional development.

 

George Scialabba event, other bloggers.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford was just one of several bloggers I met at last night's reading by George Scialabba.

I had a lot of fun last night at Powell’s Book Store, where uber-connecter Danny Postel and chronicler of the “Backlash Trilogy” Rick Perlstein introduced review extraordinaire George Scialabba.

Scialabba was soft-spoken, intensely intellectual, humble and obviously passionate about the books he reads and the ideals he holds for a better world that may yet be possible.  He opened by reading his title essay from his recently published book, What Are Intellectuals Good For?, to which he added a coda about the possibilities and realities of public discourse in the Internet era.

From there, the discussion was on. It was a wide-ranging one. Scialabba and the standing room only audience of about 35, nearly all white, mostly middle-aged and above, and seemingly all left-wingers of some stripe dug into everything from the implications of Obama’s presidency for public intellectuals to what would happen if all diseases on the planet were eradicated.

Scialabba was a combination of presenter and facilitator, asking people to elaborate, explaining where he agreed with the questioner, clarifying his positions at points and generally modeling the kind of discourse he in his book advocates.

Following the event, about a dozen of us trooped down to Maza’s for a hearty meal of Lebanese food.

Several other bloggers were in tow.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford and his lovely wife Lisa sat across from Dunreith and me.  Geoff works for Wal-mart on the third shift in the Rockford area and has blogged actively about things spiritual and religious for about three years.  I definitely recommend checking out his site.

We also gave a ride home to Michael Kramer, a humanities scholar at Northwestern who blogs about cultural criticism and the role of the scholar as a public intellectual. He’s finishing a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press about rock music and the making of sixties counterculture.  From what I could pick up from our conversation, between his dissertation and book revisions, he’s been at the project for about 10 years.  That’s longer than many hippies were hippies!

All in all, it was an evening rich in conversation, ideas and good will.  Danny is remarkable in his ability to bring together diverse yet like-minded groups of people, and I was glad to be among that number.

Saul Bellow helps us prepare to go to Jerusalem and back.

Saul Bellow's 1976 journey to Jerusalem makes for memorable reading.

In almost exactly a month, Dunreith, Aidan and I are going to Israel for two weeks.

Thanks to the daughter of dear friend Ava Kadishson Schieber, we will have a place to stay in Tel Aviv, a car to drive and a cell phone to use.

Our plan is to use Tel Aviv as a base and to take a bunch of day trips to Haifa and Golan in the north, to Eilat for scuba diving in the south, and, of course, to Jerusalem.

Dunreith lived on a kibbutz for more than a year in the mid- to late-80s,  and has returned a number of times since then, with her most recent visit being to study at Yad Vashem in 2005.

I have been to Israel once, for just about a month, in the waning days of 1998 and bringing in 1999.  Like Dunreith, I also was studying at Yad Vashem through its relationship with Facing History.

I am very excited about the trip and will be concentrating in the next month on reading more about the country’s history, sights, politics and religion.

This part of my Israel education began yesterday with Chicago native and Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow.

Bellow spent about three months in Israel in 1976; To Jerusalem and Back is his account of his time, the people he met, and the thoughts it inspired in him.

Raised in an observant home, Bellow brings great familiarity with Orthodox life to his journey.  This is the first book of his that I have read-my brother Mike gave me The Adventures of Augie March several years ago, but I have yet to crack it-and his combination of acute observations, scene setting, and purposeful sentences hooked me from the book’s initial vignette that takes place on the plane from the United States to Israel.

In addition to enjoying individual scenes and the senses of powerful people to which Bellow has access-the reader meets Hubert Humphrey, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Teddy Kollek, among others-Bellow is supremely well read.  The book is filled with references to, and excerpts from, the works of other authors.  The detail of Bellow’s reading is demonstrated by his quoting from Jean-Paul Sartre’s introduction to Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, for example.  This combination of elements makes for a delightful stew and an effective rendering of Israel’s rich diversity, the horrors out of which it was founded, and the precarious position in which it found itself more than three decades.

From Jerusalem and Back is a brief book, and, when Bellows returns homes, one wishes the trip had been even longer.

Cool comment from David Weindling of the Farther Foundation

David Weindling fartherfoundation.org dweindling@gmail.com 67.167.98.5 Submitted on 2009/11/18 at 6:58pm

Jeff, I came across your name and subsequently your blog while compiling a media list for my organization, Farther Foundation. We provide scholarships for economically disadvantaged high school students in the Chicago area to participate in educational travel programs. It was interesting to follow the various links from the things you write about through to the ideas and organizations that relate to our mission as well — cross cultural understanding, equality of educational opportunity, experiential learning. I appreciate any opportunity to make connections with people in related fields and the chance to raise awareness about our organization, its mission and programs. David

George Scialabba asks and answers What Intellectuals Are Good For.

George Scialabba will be speaking at Powell's Bookstore Friday night.

It can be hard to write what is in essence a review of reviews.

Fortunately, George Scialabba’s wit, erudition, political and moral sensibility and sheer depth of knowledge make the task a lot easier.

All are on abundant display in What Are Intellectuals Good For?, a collection of pieces Scialabba wrote between 1984 and 2005.

Scialabba will be talking about the work on Friday from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.at Powell’s Bookstore, 2850 N. Lincoln Ave.

Thanks again to uber-connector Danny Postel for getting me a copy of the book.

Scialabba’s passion for language and bone-deep pleasure in reading shine through each of the 250 pages of this memorable work.  He is unafraid to take on titans of the left, right and formerly left who turned right-read Isaiah Berlin, Matthew Arnold and Christopher Hitchens, respectively. 

Modest about his own considerable talents, Scialabba is clearly committed to advancing public conversation around key questions of this and other day: what, if anything, does life mean; what is justice; and how do we render truth?

He covers a wide range of disciplines on the journey to consider these questions. 

While What Are Intellectuals Good For? is firmly rooted in the humanities, within that space one learns about philosophy, the art of the essay, cultural history, and a twist of sociology and psychology.  Scialabba shows equal facility with fiction and non-fiction work alike, and is catholic-please notice the small c in this word-in his reading.

That said, I felt, and I could be reading too much into this, Scialabba’s affinity for his ancestral home of Italy.  

I learned about writers like Nicola Chiaraomonte and Leonardo Sciascia, whom I have not yet read, but whose works I emerged from Scialabba’s book eager to absorb. His essay about Pier Paolo Pasolini is similarly heartfelt.  In addition to evaluating individual authors, Scialabba also talks about movements, as he does in an engaging look at the demise of the New York intellectuals.  He brings his formidable evaluative talents to bear in each of these formats.

In some ways, the book reads like a fugue in that specific authors are introduced, their works become the subject of exposition and then kneaded into the fabric of the rest of the work.  Chiaromonte is one example of many of this tendency in the work.  Dwight Macdonald, a hero of Scialabba’s, is another.  I enjoyed this musical aspect to the book both because it helped me understand how authors’ works reverberated over time and because it gave the pieces a rhythmic sense of connection.

It bears mentioning that Scialabba has done all this work not within the context of the academy, but while working for nearly the past 30 years as a clerical worker at Harvard University, his undergraduate alma mater.  His work, then, is not only a stellar example of civic engagement by a “layman.”  Rather, Scialabba shows that, decades before journalism collapsed, he had figured out a way to do the work that he wanted on his terms and get it to a diverse set of audiences. 

I have not read all of Scialabba’s work, so cannot say whether the near dearth of writers of color or examination of authors from Latin America or Asia is a reflection of the choices for this collection or a more general absence in Scialabba’s reading.  While I did not know exactly what he would say in all instances, I did get a sense over time of standard elements in many Scialabba reviews: a clever opening; some textual exposition; some interweaving of the author’s personal life or contradictory aspects; a posing of major questions the author’s work raises; and a concluding thought.  Understanding architecture does not mean diminished pleasure in reading.  If anything, it could be taken as a compliment of the work that I read so many consecutive pieces that their structure felt familiar, and even a tad predictable.  

The massive reading list I got from this book notwithstanding, I plan to be at Friday’s event and hope a large group turns up to see and learn from this son of East Boston.  Through his work and career path, Scialabba has answered the question he posed in his book’s title.

 

Patriots’ loss, Belichick’s education

A repeat celebration seemed a million miles away after last night's questionable decision by Bill Belichick.

This one is going to be hard to get over.

With his team nursing a six-point lead over the Indianapolis Colts and the two-minute mark approaching, Patriots coach Bill Belichick elected to go for it on a fourth and two situation deep in his own territory.

When Kevin Faulk was deemed to have bobbled the pass from Tom Brady and landed short of the first down, the Colts took over on downs and waltzed into the end zone four plays later on a Peyton Manning bullet to Reggie Wayne.

Former Patriots kicker Adam Vinatieri clinched the victory with an extra point that made the score 35-34.

Responses to Belichick’s decision have ranged from outright denunciation, from longtime Boston Globe sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy, who compared the choice to Grady Little’s ill-fated leaving a tiring Pedro Martinez on the mound against the Yankees in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, to New York Times blogger Brian Burke, who argued that Belichick’s action made statistical sense

Globe blogger Mike Reiss had some interesting reaction from the defensive perspective.  Dwight Freeney and others said they felt disrespected by the Patriots’ going for it, while former Pats stalwart Tedy Bruschi talked about Belichick’s lack of faith in the defense.

To me, this is one of two critical points.  As much statistical sense as the choice may have made, it’s hard to see it as justified given how far the Colts would have had to travel and the relative success the Pats’ D had had against him up to that point. 

That lack of confidence will be hard to forget, especially given Belichick’s much-touted label as a defensive genius. 

Similarly, it’s easy to forget in the debate about whether Faulk indeed did have the ball in his possession that Belichick elected to pass, rather than trusting his running game to get two short yards.

This is a double vote of no-confidence.

This is now the third time in the past four years that a Mannning-led team-twice by Peyton, and once by younger brother Eli in a Super Bowl victory-has rallied from behind to snatch a last-second victory from the Patriots.

You have to wonder whether the memories of the previous defeats were in Belichick’s head when he made what may ultimately prove to be a franchise-altering choice.

Some commentators have also noted that uncharacteristically poor clock management left the Patriots without timeouts after Faulk was stopped short of first down yardage.

Whatever one thinks of last night’s choice, it’s hard to deny Belichick’s impact on the game during the past decade and during the more than 35 years he has been involved at the professional level. 

The late David Halberstam wrote an admiring biography about Belichick called The Education of a Coach.

The book opens much where the Patriots found themselves last night-on the short end of a tightly fought critical game that came down to a few vital plays.  In Education of a Coach, the work begins with the Patriots holding off a last-ditch rally by the Philadelphia Eagles to win their third Super Bowl in four years, each by the margin of a field goal.

Halberstam describes Belichick’s studying film under the tutelage of his father Steve, who coached at Navy for years, from a very young age. 

One sees all the character traits-the relentless focus, the unyielding work ethic, the willingness to experiment-that have served the Patriots so well since Belichick assumed the helm in 2000.  Some of the darker sides, like the alleged cheating and extramarital affair, do not appear in the book.

His decision to blanket Dallas Clark last night was reminiscent of his choice to make sure that Marshall Faulk, Kevin’s older brother, did not beat the Patriots in the 2001 Super Bowl against the heavily favored Rams.  Halberstam describes this victory in some detail.

That decisions paid dividends, launching a still relatively unknown quarterback drafted in the sixth round named Tom Brady toward superstardom and the Patriots toward one of the sport’s more impressive dynasties.

Last night’s call to go for it may not be unrivaled, as Shaughnessy maintains, but it is difficult to see the team, as resilient as it is, simply rebounding and moving on as Belichick insisted they would do.